If my working conditions were consistently hindered and the press saw fit to interview me, I'd take it public as well. Most people are discreet, but you can only take so much. No one expects anyone to work in undesirable conditions on a consistent basis. Now if they want to warn you beforehand that painful officiating is part of the game, that's another thing. Last I heard,though,nowhere in any player's contract does it say "We'll pay you X amount for X amount of time, but the officiating is going to be highly inconsistent. Consider it an occupational hazard."

The League has the best officiating of any sport. Just ask Bettman; he'll tell you.

"Our refs get it right 99% of the time"

I don't want coaches to be fines for bitching about the reffing and individual calls, but can see the point of fining them for questioning the integrity of the game... And I also see the point in Torts saying it anyway.

Red Kelly #4 and Larry Aurie #6 belong in the rafters!!!

"For my game, I don't need to score the goal," Konstantinov once explained. "I need someone to start thinking about me and forgetting about scoring goals."

I can recall two Saints games down here in the NFL where the officiating was just so pathetic. I had to stop watching one of those two games for a while because it was so awful.

Same in college, my alma mater upset Boise State on their turf this season, one of the worst officiated games I've seen in my life. Also another game where we were favored but loss/got upset, while we didn't take care of business the refs playing a much bigger factor than necessary in determining the outcome. That absolutely drives me nuts.

But I digress.

Could Tortorella have said things behind closed doors? Sure. Should he have? Probably. Do I blame him for being frustrated about it and saying it in public? No. Not really supporting it or condoning it. It's not the first time it has happened and it won't be the last. Just shows how horrible the officiating can be.

Just don't understand why officials in all leagues have to be treated with special kid gloves and cannot be critiqued in public. I hate using the officiating excuse as to why my team might have lost but I'm not going to hesitate in saying if they blew a big call or playing a bigger hand in a game outcome.

it'd be absolutely right to keep it private. If it was internal/private company issue.

In this case, both coaches and ref are (so to speak) league's employees. Now, who are customers? I think, we are, fans.

If there are issues with reffing, that means we are getting bad product. Worse, anybody who rises concern gets punished. End even worse, when league publicly admits employee made a mistake, the employee never gets punished.

And finally, as a result, the product doesn't get better, it gets worse.

I think you summed up why it's a problem to have coaches calling out the officials and league in public. As you said, the public are the customers. If you screwed up at work, would you want your coworkers to call customers and announce that you were not doing your job correctly, and might be scamming them, or should that kind of thing happen behind the scenes? If this happened to you, I can guarantee your first stop would be HR, and I'd imagine it's the same here. Notice how coaches never say "Bryzgalov just screwed everything up, he's terrible, and it was a huge mistake for us to sign him." That's just not how things work in a business.

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.

I went to a doctor the other day, and all he did was suck blood out of my neck. Never go see Dr. Acula - Mitch Hedberg

I think it would be absolutely hysterical if one day after a particularly horribly reffed game, Babcock would walk out to the post game podium with a $100 bill wrapped around a wad of money sized paper and set it on the podium and say something like, this is just in case I slip up when you ask me about lack of power plays...

DAN WHATEVER YOUR f****** NAME IS CLEAR OR CLEARLY GET THE f*** OUT OF THIS TEAM BACK GO f****** LEARN TO PLAY MORON I PERSONALY DON'T GIVE A s*** THAT YR LEG IS f***ET UP, PLEASE LIIVE. ANF BABCOCK PLEASE GET READ OF OUR QUINESSSSSSYYYYY HOLLAND YOU JUST HIT THE JUCK f****** POTT!